My Passive Income and Life Goals Update (February 2025)

Welcome to another edition of “Is Lazy Man doing anything?” On the last edition (one month ago), I created a whole bunch of financial and life goals. I also gave a report on my progress for the first month. Expert Tip: It’s great to make your goals after you’ve had a month to work on them. This month, I’m reviewing where I was at the end of February.

February started off being a difficult month. My wife is a military pharmacist, so the changes in the government create unnecessary confusion and delay* almost every day. It’s the opposite of government efficiency. The theory is that it will get more efficient as we adjust to the new systems. As the month went on, things started to get a little better. Maybe we got used to the chaos?

Usually, I like to show pictures and call out some of the family things we did over the past month. This article is already later than I want it to be. I also feel like share those highlights distorts the actual real life situation. It almost inevitably leads to people making comparisons with their own life which can be unhealthy. No one should feel like they have to live up to other people’s highlight reels. It’s really about it being late.

Setting Goals for 2025

I put all my goals in a spreadsheet. Here’s what it looks like for this year. I’ll explain what each one is in this article and give the results for January.

(Click it, and it will open in a new tab.)

Steal this idea and make it yours. I make an absurd number of goals I know I’ll never complete. It gives me the flexibility to fail on some things as long as I’m making progress on others. Most people would do the opposite, focus on fewer goals, and aim to get them all done. It’s much less overwhelming. As always, do what works for you.

Passive Income

I have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and I manage a website for a non-profit. They all require some active work. However, I can get paid by all three even while working a full-time job. I do some other hourly work that isn’t passive income. That isn’t included here, of course.

In the past, I’ve written a whole monthly article on this passive income. I’ve cut out the fluff to give you the numbers with minimal explanation. If this area seems off or confusing, perhaps the last full article will make more sense.

Dog, Blog, and Web Income

Dog boarding income was a mixed bag February. It’s was higher the average month for last year, but lower for February. There are school vacations and holiday rates, so it should be one of our bigger months. However, it’s the off-season in the touristy area Newport, Rhode Island and a short month.

Blog income isn’t going well, but it had a little bump up and was above the average month last year. I think it will soon earn next to nothing. Everyone loves their social media, podcasts, videos, and artificial intelligence searches. The future of blogging doesn’t look bright.

Finally, I make a very little bit of money by running a website for a non-profit. I get a set amount every month, and most months, I don’t have to do too much.

All of these require some work, but a lot of it is fairly passive. I can work at another job from home while I am boarding a dog. I make a very little bit of money in my sleep from blogging and simply being available to do the website work. I consider income from these areas as half passive income.

Last month, I made $3,268.40 in income from these sources. This month, the total dog/blog/web income was $4,802.27.

Rental Property Income

We have two rental properties. We still have mortgages on them, so the rental income is around $700/mo. We will pay off one mortgage in 2027. The other one is a small loan, but it has another 15 years on it. If they were both mortgage-free, we’d make around $25,000 a year.

The big news this month is one of our tenants broke the lease and moved out. They had a health situation that made paying difficult. Their parents covered the bill for a couple of months. They had ghosted us for a bit but finally said that they needed to move closer to the best hospital for care. Given the situation, we weren’t going to make a big deal out of losing a month of rent.

The rent on this property was way under the market rate. We’ll be able to list it for 30% more than what we were getting. We’re going to take the opportunity to renovate it, though, because some of the stuff is original from the mid-1980s.

For the purpose of this report, I calculate their income using the following formula:

(Rents After Estimated Expenses) * (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)

Estimated expenses are insurance, property taxes, condo fees, and estimated condo maintenance. Equity Percentage Owned (EPO) is our total equity divided by the property value in Zillow. (Zillow is very accurate for our condos.)

The goal for the year is for this number to be $21,000. Last year, we finished with $19,006. This number usually doesn’t go up very fast. Typically, the only two ways it can increase substantially is if the rents/estimated change or if the market jumps and Zillow estimates our properties as worth more money.

In February, Zillow estimated our properties were worth a thousand more dollars. We paid off another thousand in mortgage principal. That meant that our EPO went from owning 82.23% of our properties to 82.41% of the properties. The rents after expenses are $2,218/month. Using the equation above, our income from this area would be $2,190.

Managing rental properties requires some work – a few days a year. For this reason, I only count 80% of this number as passive income.

Dividend Income

My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.

I don’t track dividends from all the accounts. I’m doing well to get my wife to log into her TSP (government’s version of a 401k) account and give me the totals. Instead of tracking dividends, I assume we could invest the money into an ETF that pays a 2.5% dividend. For example, HDV currently yields 3.5%.

I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend – it’s just taxed a little differently.

The markets were doing very well after the election. However, markets don’t like uncertainty. I don’t think the tariff strategy is going to work. It seems like the markets agree, and Trump keeps flipping between adding tariffs and taking them away.

In January, we could have made $5,146 in dividends. In February, that fell down to $5,042. There’s not much we can do with this one. I’ve started to invest more conservatively until the captain figures out which way he wants to sail the ship.

Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don’t have to adjust the numbers.

Total Passive Income

Dog/Blogs: $4804 – Adjusted by 50% to $2,402
Rentals: $2,190 – Adjusted by 20% to $1,752
Dividends: $5,042 – Remains at $5,042

Dogs/Blogs Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line

Total Adjusted Passive Income: $9,196

Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:

The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The Red Line represents the 12-month average. This removes some of the seasonality of dog boarding. I’m mostly focused on that red line. February was a new all-time, with an average of $8,713.35 over the last 12 months. Less and less of this income is dependent on my quasi-passive income, like dogs/blogs.

My wife continues to work as well. She has 26 years in the military and will be getting a pension that may double all this passive income. I also earn some income that falls outside of the areas listed above. It’s not passive, so I don’t mention it here.

I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth went down -1.35% last month. For the year, it is down -0.35%.

Business and Other Money Goals

Personal Income ($75,000)

Three years ago, I made over $98,000 in side hustles. Two years ago, I made $88,000. Last year, I made a little more than $81,000.

I see a trend, and it is not great.

This year, I’m going to aim for $75,000. I think earning income is generally going to head down for a while. That’s okay; our passive income is going up, so we’ll come out ahead.

Through February, I made around $12,984.50, which is a pace for just under $78,000. It looks good now, but with travel coming up, we will probably be low for the next update.

Complete Estate Planning

Last year, I made a huge effort to get an estate plan together. I got it about 95% done. In January, we sent the check to the lawyer to draw it up. In February my wife and I were too busy to do too much more than schedule an appointment for early March. Spoiler alert for next month: We had that meeting.

Kid Wealth (Goal: 50,000 Page Views)

For the fourth year, I hope to get to 50,000 page views on Kid Wealth.

In 2022, I launched Kid Wealth and wrote a lot of articles. It had 4,200 page views that year. In 2023, I got involved in other projects, but I tripled traffic to 13,708. Last year, traffic continued to grow to 16,352, even though I only wrote a couple of articles.

At the end of February, we had 38,541 lifetime views. I have ideas for a bunch more articles, but I haven’t had the time/motivation to get them going. It’s on target to get to 50,000 page views towards the end of the year.

At some point, it would be great if it made some money. I’m not sure how to monetize it. Perhaps it is better if I don’t.

Professional Improvements

I feel like I need to seek out some new income opportunities. I should put some of my tech skills to use. They are too rusty for the general job market, but I might be able to use them for other projects.

One concrete goal would be to get a website showing off a portfolio of what I’ve done in the past. Like most things I got a start to that website, but progress has stalled.

I’ll be the first to admit that this goal is not well-defined at all. I’m not sure if my heart is into it. As you can tell, I have a good amount of projects going on and we’re doing fine with money. I’d rather take it easy and spend more time with the kids.

Health

I’m putting a large emphasis on health these days. It’s so big that I wrote a separate article about it. My health goals for 2025 are here.

Weight and Body Fat (Goal: 164lbs / 19% BF)

At the end of February, my average weight was 172.6 pounds, which is a loss of 1.2 lbs from last month. My body fat was 22.3% which went up 0.1%. I’m surprised that I lost any weight. There was a local event where dozens of restaurants had a burger competition over ten days. My wife and I sampled around five or six burgers.

The semaglutide still seems to be working. I would have probably gained five pounds in a month eating like that without it. I’m only taking a small dose because I don’t need to lose much weight. My BMI is 26.2, and I’m down about 25 pounds from my high at the end of 2023.

Body and Brain Points (300 and 200 respectively)

I score myself from 1 (poor) to 5 (great) each week for diet and exercise. I then add them up for the month. At the end of February, I had 51 points. That puts me on pace for around 305 points. Almost all the points came from diet. February was another month of extreme cold, so I didn’t feel like getting outside to exercise.

I measure brain points on the same scale. They are based on doing the exercises that I gave you at the top of the Health section. At the of February, I have 27 brain points. That’s only 162 points for the year. I might need to do more.

Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)

I have a family history of high blood pressure. I had a little medical scare in the first couple of days of the year. I started taking my blood pressure and graphing it for my primary care physician. My blood pressure in January averaged 138/92. My doctor saw the results and decided to put me on lisinopril 5mg.

In February, my average blood pressure dropped to 132/90. It’s an improvement, but not enough. I’m reaching out to my doctor to see if I can up the lisinopril to 10mg. I’m also going to look into more diet and lifestyle changes that I can make. Losing weight should also help.

Doctor Appointments

I also had some bloodwork reviewed by my primary care physician last month. It’s all very good, so I’m excited about that. Working on blood pressure is important enough for the next few months.

Longevity Research

I didn’t get a chance to schedule my DexaFit appointment in February. We’ve got some travel coming up, so I’ll look to schedule my DexaFit appointment in April. For now, all the stuff above will have to count as longevity.

Hobbies

Boost AI Skills

This year, I’m looking to learn how to use different AI tools effectively. I have a ChatGPT Pro account and an Anthropic Claude Pro account. In hindsight, I don’t know if I needed to pay for both. I probably could just use ChatGPT. I also started to use Google Notebook LM, but I barely scratched the surface.

I want to explore creating AI human video avatars and other things like that. I talked to a friend recently and he seemed to like some of the ideas I had about where the industry is going. I might write more about this later this year.

3D Printing

I had this on my list all last year as I have a 3D printer, but I haven’t been able to load the filament correctly. It feels like I should be able to carve out a half hour and move forward with this. Yet, here we are, and it’s still on the list.

Journaling

I should be keeping a journal of some kind. Lazy Man and Money is my money journal. The goal is a journal for everything else.

Here are some other ideas of things I want to work on this year:

• Learn to fly a flight simulator
• Play a modern song on a ukulele
• Rubik’s Cube

I learned how to solve it last year. This goal would be to take it to the next level and do it fast by memorizing more advanced algoritms. I’m not sure that I care enough about this.

You may recognize the last two of these hobbies from my brain health goals for 2025.

Family

Declutter and Organize House

Every year, we aim to declutter and organize better than the year before. Stuff builds up over time. Much of it comes from stuff from the kids. Admittedly, more of it comes from me. I have difficulty getting rid of “good stuff with value” even if we don’t use it. It sounds easy enough to donate, but a lot of places near us won’t take it.

We had a professional organizer come in January and she was great, but expensive. This motivated me to do more of this myself. I just imagine that I’m paying myself by spending time on it. In February, I narrowed down my closet of clothes. I have more to do, but it is perhaps the biggest thing to declutter outside of our garage and basement. We’ll need warmer weather for each of those.

Travel

We had no travel in February, but this month, we’re going to Orlando for a week. We’ll look for things to do that aren’t related to Disney and Universal Studios, which we’ve done several times. The following week, we’ll be on the Icon of the Seas cruise. If you follow the cruise industry, you probably know that it is the biggest cruise ship in the world. We did Wonder of the Seas last year, and it was extremely big.

Upcoming trips:

• June – Annual trip to Block Island. It’s cheaper during shoulder season, and we can get there by short drive and ferry. I love to get away from technology for a little while.
• August – We’ve just started planning this, but it looks like we’re taking a road trip to Toronto and stopping at the sights along the way. None of us have ever been to Toronto, so it’s something new. We can stop by the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Niagara Falls on the way. We can come back through Hershey, Pennsylvania, and American Dream in New Jersey, which are two of the kids’ favorite places.
• December – Maybe we can go back to Aruba with our timeshare. We skipped it in 2024. I have to check with my wife about the status of this. We’ve started to focus more on 2026 travel.

Kids

The kids continue to do their elite private school thing. It’s getting absurdly expensive, but my wife’s military discount gives us a big break.
Outside of that, the biggest things are summer camps and after-school activities.

After School Activities

They should have earned their black belts in karate by now. Unfortunately, their school has had some bad luck with management – just freak injuries and other complications. We’ve finally doing the last training now, but the times are conflicting with other activities that were scheduled already.

The 12-year-old just achieved Tenderfoot rank in Scouts and is halfway to Second Class. The 11-year-old graduated from Cub Scouts in February. It is great having them back in the same group. I can’t manage them in different Troops when they often meet two or three times a week.

The 12-year-old continues to be in any and every play. He finished It’s a Wonderful Life in December and Alice in Wonderland earlier this month. He auditioned for Hello Dolly in the local children’s theater, which is more competitive. He got a smaller role there, but it’s a good start.

The 12-year-old tried swimming, but it conflicted with the plays too much. It was a school requirement to do a school sport, so we were able to check the box. My 11-year-old finished basketball season by getting approximately 45 seconds of floor time. I went to four games to see him ride the bench. Most of the fifth graders had the same playing time he did. It’s a tough competition with grades 5-8 on the team.

Summer Camps

With our June and August travel plans, we have about eight weeks of camps to plan.

Both kids are doing five weeks of the school’s theater camp. My 12-year-old is doing acting, and my 11-year-old is doing set design. In the past, they hadn’t gotten along well, so we had to separate them. Now, they can work together but choose to do things they are well-suited for.

The 11-year-old has a sailing camp that runs for two weeks. That leaves him with another week to figure out. We might do the Scout camp, an art camp, or a cooking camp. The Scout camp is overnight and might be a little too much for him.

We have some plans set up for the 12-year-old, but nothing has been booked yet. Some camps open up later, so we’re trying to keep some options open.

Final Thoughts

I know that February is a short month, but it seemed even shorter. I know everyone feels this way, but where does the time go?

For the next couple of weeks we’ll be focusing on vacation and renovating the condo to get it ready to rent for May. That will take us through March and then I’ll get started writing another one of these updates.

* This is a common phrase from Thomas the Tank Engine. Even though my kids outgrew that years ago, it’s still a phrase that we use today.

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